Search selection

Core Development Feature Requests
1

Hi There,

is this possible?

Screenshot 2026-10-21 at 08.50.10
Screenshot 2026-10-21 at 08.50.10534×162 6.04 KB

searching for something within a selection. Use case is that I want to search for something but only in a limited set of nodes, not the entire flow.

Checking the dropdown:

Screenshot 2026-10-21 at 08.51.47
Screenshot 2026-10-21 at 08.51.47220×273 4.69 KB

I guess the work around would be to copy the selection to a new flow and then search current flow only.

2

Your workaround actually works today: the search dialog has a "Current Flow" scope (hamburger menu, Search flows, then the down arrow in the dialog), so copy the selection into a scratch flow and search there. A true selection-scoped search does not seem to exist yet. The official editor guide describes the search dialog as indexing the whole workspace, with only the is:config, is:subflow, is:unused, is:invalid and uses: filters. Fun bit of history: an older feature request here asked for current-flow search back in 2018, and the answer years later was exactly that menu option. So extending it to selections is a reasonable next ask, and this thread is in the right place for it.

3

Hey @gregorius
I've raised Feature: option to limit search to selection · Issue #6033 · node-red/node-red · GitHub to keep track of this

4

Thanks Nick for picking it up :+1:

5

I've just commented on it. My choice of prefix is probably erroneous, selection: is probably more appropriate than search: (since the whole context is a search!).

Also I'm for having another search qualifier since then it would be possible to apply the qualifier as part of a direct search, i.e., RED.search.search("only in selection selection:current") which then could be combined to create something rather complex: RED.search.search("only in selection selection:current flow:current type:function") for search only selected function nodes in the current tab.